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I've read the technical paper before... I've a few more math classes to complete before some of that begins to make sense to me, but I think I get the gist of it. Dr. Humphreys' model of a enormous sphere of water at the initial time of creation is fascinating and is at least partially confirmed through his prediction of the magnetic field strengths of Uranus and Neptune.

I'm not really sure how to compare this to ASC in terms of being more or less fulfilling, though. Personally, I prefer ASC because of its relative simplicity.

There's something fascinating to me about time dilation. Humphrey's model seems to account for instantaneous light at the beginning followed by time dilation which, in my mind, does away with the need to resort to ASC. Light can be a continuous speed and everything else seems to be explained eligantly. Besides simplicity are there any other advantages ASC has over time dilation?

Stefan Morin said:

I've read the technical paper before... I've a few more math classes to complete before some of that begins to make sense to me, but I think I get the gist of it. Dr. Humphreys' model of a enormous sphere of water at the initial time of creation is fascinating and is at least partially confirmed through his prediction of the magnetic field strengths of Uranus and Neptune.

I'm not really sure how to compare this to ASC in terms of being more or less fulfilling, though. Personally, I prefer ASC because of its relative simplicity.

Alexander Martin said:Besides simplicity are there any other advantages ASC has over time dilation?

If there are, I can't think of them tonight and/or they're well beyond my current level of knowledge! I agree, the idea is extremely fascinating, and one day we'll know for sure (I have a list of questions to ask when I get to heaven :P). I really would love to discuss the merits of each model, though. I'm done for the night, but I'll definitely check back tomorrow evening to see what points might be brought up by yourself or others.

Okay, so basically, I like the ASC model better because Humphreys' model seems to resort to a lot of "what-if" scenarios (ex: "Now imagine that during the fourth day, God creates star masses in a way that would create a linearly-dented perturbation...", "If, as God stretches out the fabric of space (e.g. Isaiah 40:22), He changes the tension simultaneously everywhere...", "Let’s suppose the tension in the fabric of space suddenly decreases" [emphasis mine]).

That being said, I wonder what effect, if any, the one-way speed of light being position dependent (the ASC model) has on things like red-shift. Sadly, I don't have enough of a physics background (yet!) to really address that. If you have any ideas, let me know.

I don't have much of a physics background either but just an interest so all we could talk about would be implications. I probably should do some more reading for why water is important to the physics of Humphrey's model. If its only importance is to put it in there because the Bible talks about water above the firmament then it would seem a little arbitrary.

Now don't get me wrong. I find it completely legitimate to look to the Bible for ideas on how to develope a scientific paradigm. After all, the Heliocentric universe only happened because Copernicus was dissatisfied with Ptolemy's geocentric model and so he read ancient Greek manuscripts until he ran into Pythagoras' ideas that the earth moved around the sun. It was that "new" conception from an ancient writer who formed his own religious cult that started Copernicus on a thought process that changed the way the world thinks. The same thing happened with the change in how we viewed the age of the earth and the idea that life developed from simple to complex over time. They all came from ancient Greek manuscripts who never separated their science, philosophy, and religion. They view these three categories as the same. Therefore, the new ideas came from ancient religious texts. Humphrey's is free to do the same so long as he can make sense out the new elements he adds to his model and doesn't just throw them in arbitrarily.

Now, John Hartnet really made sense to me. The only problem I had with his model is that the universe would have to be squeezed into an area no more than six thousand light years in radius for us to be able to see the edges of the universe we see today. Not even our galaxy is less than six thousand light years in radius. It has a radius of about 50,000 light years. Of course, if the dimensions were stretched along with space then it wouldn't matter and the galaxies could be compressed with little consequence (or at least little consequence that my non-physics background can fathom). If Humphrey's achronicity solves this issue then that's good. If water above the firmament is needed to produce achronicity then I would hope he has some sort of practical predictions we can look for to verify evidence of the water. The water thing is what bogles me with his model. Do you have any insight on this?

Stefan Morin said:

Okay, so basically, I like the ASC model better because Humphreys' model seems to resort to a lot of "what-if" scenarios (ex: "Now imagine that during the fourth day, God creates star masses in a way that would create a linearly-dented perturbation...", "If, as God stretches out the fabric of space (e.g. Isaiah 40:22), He changes the tension simultaneously everywhere...", "Let’s suppose the tension in the fabric of space suddenly decreases" [emphasis mine]).

That being said, I wonder what effect, if any, the one-way speed of light being position dependent (the ASC model) has on things like red-shift. Sadly, I don't have enough of a physics background (yet!) to really address that. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Alexander Martin said:"I probably should do some more reading for why water is important to the physics of Humphrey's model..."

Dr. Humphreys references some scriptures that he interprets as meaning that God used water as a raw creation material (for example the last part of 2 Peter 3:5 (NASB): ". . . and the earth was formed out of water and by water."). It's a really interesting idea and was one of the basic assumptions he made when making his model for planetary magnectic field strength. If you haven't read his work on that yet, I would highly recommend it. It may clear a few things up for you.

Ok, finally got a chance to read through the whole paper. Like unto all, I can't say I understand it completely, but did find a few quotes that I thought worth singling out:

"Although other distributions of mass could also solve the Pioneer mystery, this one seems more applicable to biblical cosmology."

So, acknowledges that other systems explain the data. Still, as he points out, his does this, and fits with the framework of the expanding watery sphere.

"That means dτ is a mathematically imaginary number. This suggests that in this region, physical clocks would stop completely. Time would no longer exist. Regions of space below the critical gravitational potential would be achronous."

This is the most telling. What Dr. Humphreys is showing is that there is a potential for the solution to become imaginary. He does not know what this would mean to time, and makes a guess that it would stop. It could move backward, could create a paradox that would destroy the whole universe (borrowing from "Back to the Future" =) ) or do something entirely different. Assuming....

"That stops the propagation of light, all physical processes, and all physical clocks, thus stopping time itself."

By this then, we exist in the area where time would have stopped while other galaxies/stars/phenomena, etc exist in areas where time continues, and thus we have not aged while they have.

This certainly is an intriguing possibility, and I'll look forward to further studies as they try to verify/predict based upon these suppositions. Personally, I'll utilize ASC when trying to give a possible reason for distant starlight, as its easier to explain, and gives as good an answer. Also, as ASC is symply a convention in a relativistic universe (like ours) then you actually could have both. ASC simply being the convention for determining synchonicity throughout the bible and Achronicity being the physical phenomena of the universe.